Venue: Galleri BOX, Kastellgatan 20, Göteborg
Exhibition period: 22 August - 14 September
Hold on takes its starting point in Johan Nahoj’s long-running collaborative project ON-HOLD and borrows many of its components, but now turns inward – towards the artist’s own acts of collecting, sorting, and reshaping. Nahoj works in the borderland between the studio and the exhibition space, between painting and object. Driven by impulse and an associative method, he cuts, joins, and repurposes materials and works, letting previous meanings dissolve and form anew. Traces of the past remain as sediment in the work. The collection ranges from seeds to the overripe, from unresolved to worn-out – things that could have been discarded or displayed. Nahoj often returns to the shelf for its double role as both show-off and hide-out, and for its presence in every stage of an artwork’s creation and life. Here, finished works meet torn-apart attempts, hardened paint washed ashore, graffiti, stacks of coins, paint flakes, photographs, fabric scraps, and crushed marble – all things that might constitute painting. The work reflects a mental need for both order and movement – a way to create structure within change. It moves between resting in chaos and enduring structure, between letting go of what is stuck and holding on to what is slipping away.